Review: Dying in the Land of Promise

Third Quarter 2001

by Donald Kruse

Dying in the Land of Promise (London: Melisende, 2001), the latest book by Donald Wagner, lays a solid basis for understanding the history of Christianity in the land of Palestine. This is a well-researched work designed to inform American Christians, especially Evangelicals, that Christian communities have been living in Israel/Palestine for 2000 years and that this living witness to the gospel has been deeply threatened by 20th-century events. The particular threats to Christians that Wagner weighs are the revival of Islam, the establishment of the state of Israel, and Israel's ongoing military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

Wagner is one of America's leading experts on the subject of Arab Christianity. An ordained Presbyterian minister, he is currently associate professor of religion at North Park University in Chicago. He has served as executive director of Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding (EMEU), an organization dedicated to the promotion of dialogue and fellowship between Eastern Christians and Christians in the West. A prolific writer and speaker, Wagner earlier published Anxious for Armageddon (1995).

Dying in the Land of Promise is essentially a history of the church in the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. It is the history of a people who have become known in the 20th century as the "forgotten faithful" because of the shift of the church's center of gravity westward and now southward, leaving indigenous Christians in the Middle East often feeling isolated and abandoned. Some of the historical facts that Wagner brings out are little known even to the informed reader. For example, did we know that Palestine, between 321 A.D., when the emperor Constantine was converted to Christianity, and the Persian conquest of Palestine in 614, was probably the most Christian land in the world with more churches and monasteries than anywhere else? Did we know that when the Persian army conquered Christian Jerusalem in 614, the local Jewish population collaborated with the Persians to massacre Christians? An estimated 60,000 Christians were killed in Jerusalem alone at that time.

The historical turning point for Palestine in the Christian era was the Muslim conquest of 636. With the exception of the period of the Crusades, Palestine was thereafter part of the Arab Muslim world until the 20th cent ury. Nevertheless, the Christian faith survived in the region from the time of Christ until today. Although a minority in their homeland, Christians remained.

More than half of Wagner's book is devoted to the 20th century, which began with Palestine being described as a "backwater" of the Ottoman Empire that controlled Palestine from 1517 to World War I. At the end of the 19th century, the population of Palestine totaled about 500,000, with the vast majority being Muslim and Christian. There were about 30,000 Jews. Among the Arabs, more than 80 percent were Muslim and the remainder Christian. The root cause of Christian emigration out of Palestine in the 20th century has been politics and war. Palestinians (both Muslim and Christian) lost 80 percent of their territory in 1948 to the new state of Israel. Then in 1967, during the Six-Day War, Israel conquered the remaining 20 percent (the West Bank and Gaza), which remains largely under Israeli control despite the promise of Palestinian self-government embodied in the 1993 Oslo accords.

Wagner debunks certain myths about the founding of the state of Israel. For example, blame for the flight of about 700,000 Arabs from their homes and villages in Palestine is commonly imputed to Arab leaders who supposedly exhorted them to get out of the way of invading Arab armies. The book makes clear, however, that most of the Arabs were forced to flee by the attacks or threat of attacks by Jewish militia. According to Wagner, the "centerpiece of the (Zionist) comprehensive military strategy was Plan Dalet . . . designed to depopulate major concentrations of Palestinians while expanding the borders of the new state of Israel." Today, Christians make up only about two percent of the population of roughly 9 million in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, compared to about 20 percent in 1900.

In his final chapter, "Death or Resurrection," Wagner pulls together two themes present throughout the book: how the political issue of justice impacts the future role of Palestinian Christianity. With a just resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Wagner can envision Palestinian Christians playing a pivotal role in building bridges of reconciliation. With the help of Western Christians, these Palestinians might well see a different future whenever peace follows justice. Read this book and pray for justice to roll down.

[Donald Kruse, a retired foreign service officer, lives in Vienna, Virginia. He chairs Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding.]